


Gut Yontif

by shretl (girlundone)



Series: A Girl Needs A Gun These Days [5]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Grief, Jewish Shepard, Mourning, Yom Kippur | Atonement Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 04:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20924153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlundone/pseuds/shretl
Summary: On Yom Kippur, different levels of grief and mourning are shared in the Shepard-Vakarian household.





	Gut Yontif

**Author's Note:**

> To paraphrase Adam Sandler, there's a lot of Christmas fics out there and not a lot of Yom Kippur ones. I thought I'd change that.
> 
> Please, though, keep in mind Rachel Shepard is not an ambassador of Judaism and neither is her author. The way in which she celebrates Yom Kippur may differ from other accounts you, dear readers, have read or experienced yourself. Please just keep in mind this is a story, not a guide. Thank you and have a _gut yontif_!

There were three yahrzeit, or memorial candles burning on a baking sheet atop the stove. Simple wax votives encased in glass cups that burned for twenty-four hours. One for the father she adored, another for the mother she never knew, and a third for all those lost in the war. It wasn’t traditional to light a yahrzeit candle for a group of people. Certainly not a group that held no blood relation. And yet, years of living with Garrus and understanding one of the turian ideas of spirits— the collective soul of a body of people, not individuals— had perhaps shaped Shepard’s view of what entity a candle of remembrance could be lit for.

The Kithoi apartment had the mournful quality of a rainy day as the night cycle approached. Shepard lowered her palm to just above the fire of her father’s candle. Its autumnal glow tinted her pale hand amber. She was careful not to disturb the small blaze, but instead savour its warmth. She closed her eyes and, for a moment, imagined the heat came not from the flickering flame, but the solid, teasing form of her father himself.

One year, their first together in that cottage in Gamecock, Shepard offered to light a candle for Lavinia, Garrus’ mother, but he declined. And just like he respected her decisions, she respected his. Like any house of mixed beliefs and ethnicities, they created a home of rich, abundant, and varied cultural and religious practices that often grew into new traditions of their own. Castis and Solana joined them for a table-groaning Seder on Passover and Shepard partook in the revelry on Unification Day. When Garrus mourned his mother on the anniversary of her death, she stood in solid support at his side. And now, on Yom Kippur, he too stood beside her, silent but sympathetic.

With a clean napkin atop her head, for she and Garrus had been married a year, she began to recite the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. As the ancient words flowed from her lips like wine, she saw her father’s laughing eyes, Kasumi’s mysterious smile, Miranda’s smirk of confidence. She saw Samara encased in the azure aura of biotics and Thane calmly sipping tea. She saw EDI’s hologram flicker bluely and Legion wearing her N7 stripe.

She saw Earth burn and blasts of red beams cut through Menae. She saw the fall of Thessia and the carnage on Sur’Kesh.

She closed her eyes and beneath her lids, she saw the flame of her father’s yahrzeit candle beaming with hope.

Shepard opened her eyes, gave Garrus a kiss on his scarred mandible, and changed out of her precious leather jacket with so much meaning— a promise made sacred between herself and her husband— and switched to a knit cardigan wrap. She wasn’t particularly observant. She didn’t keep kosher or Shabbat. But to wear leather on Yom Kippur when it was prohibited seemed an unnecessary thumbing of her nose to old customs and beliefs.

A skycab later and she was in shul. There was something uplifting, something like succour in being surrounded by people who share one’s beliefs, one’s ethnicity. She was never alone with Garrus. That was another sacred promise between them. She had a family among Castis and Solana and the former _Normandy _crew. But to not have to explain one’s traditions, to simply have one’s beliefs understood without explanation, was like once more being embraced in her father’s arms.

Her back twinged through her hip and down her leg during the opening of the Torah, but she stood firm in her place to see the silver-tipped scrolls displayed. She heard the cantor sing the Aramaic beauty of Kol Nidre, meaning all vows, and was pardoned three times with those like-minded around her. She closed her eyes during Ne’ilah Amidah, the time for mute confessions, knocking her chest with her fist silently for each transgression committed during the just-past year. Silly fights with Garrus, not giving her seat up once on a Rapid Transit car. And, though the rest of her sins were years past and long since forgiven in the eyes of faith, she recounted all those decisions she made in the Alliance and before. She thought back further, to her time in the Reds and those she had lured and swindled. Her fallen comrades on Akuze. The lives she had cost as a Spectre, especially the mission to Aratoht and what became of the Bahak system. She could never fast or pray enough over Bahak. Those further lives lost during the war. Her ultimate choice at the Crucible and everything that transpired from that moment. The relays, the geth, and EDI. And though she knew she made the right decision, she still sought absolution from that virtue. 

Shepard got back late from synagogue, for evening Yom Kippur services always seemed to run long. She wasn’t hungry yet, but there was still a day of fasting ahead. Garrus was already in bed, sitting up and reading from a datapad held far away from his face so he could read the print, as though he were having trouble making it out. She watched him fondly as she climbed into bed beside him. It was the Day of Atonement, not Thanksgiving, but she was forever grateful for him in her life.

“Have fun?” he asked without a sideways glance. She could see it was not work but a gun mod catalogue he was perusing. Well, he certainly worked hard enough to dally on such things before well-earned rest.

She leaned her head against his cowl, briefly noting it was, of course, a sniper rifle scope he was so interested in before she let her eyes drift shut. “It was nice.”

They were quiet after that. Garrus moved his arm so his talon-tipped hand was in her hair, still presumably reading the specs on that mod while Shepard let her body relax. It hurt from sitting and standing so much in synagogue, but she found it hard to be resentful. After all, she could be one of those yahrzeit candles out there tonight. It was a night of forgiveness but also of mourning.

“Garrus?”

He responded with an answering hum.

She blinked her heavy eyes open and tilted her head up without removing it from his cowl. “I’m sorry we fought.”

Garrus was used to this midnight confession. She did it every year. It was customary to ask forgiveness for one’s wrongdoings on Yom Kippur. “Which time?” he countered dryly.

Shepard tried not to smile. Though their affection was boundless, it didn’t stop them from getting into petty squabbles. On this day, she was willing to accept her fault in them. “All of them. We shouldn’t fight.”

Garrus’ own mandibles twitched. He finally looked away from his prized catalogue to glance down at her upturned face. “It’s fun to fight with you. Not as fun as in an antique store, but close.”

She lifted her head and kissed him lightly. “I love you, you know.” She added that sometimes, because she understood what a hard time Garrus had saying those three words himself. It took the pressure off of him, because Shepard did not doubt his feelings toward her, just his ability to verbally express them.

“I know,” was his typical reply. Sometimes in his teasing bombast, sometimes rather abashed with himself that he couldn’t return the words if not the sentiment. But something that evening made him add, certainly to her surprise and maybe to his as well, “Me too.”

It warmed her heart, if not her icy hands and feet, as she snuggled down to slumber next to him.

* * *

Shepard woke up early the next morning for services, but before she left, she drank a bottle of water. She wasn’t so observant as to forgo all liquid, though she did try to limit herself to water or plain tea unless she felt faint. Fasting was one thing, but passing out served no one, above or otherwise.

That sense of community once more embraced around her during services, but especially during Yizkor, the memorial prayer, when all those standing had suffered loss close to their heart. Most stood for parents who were gone, as Shepard did, but she also kept in mind all those lives who had touched her own and now were gone.

She left after morning services were over, drained and somewhat hungry, without the intention of returning for afternoon services, though it meant she would miss the last blowing of the ram’s horn shofar. Ahead was a long afternoon, for Shepard wasn’t used to being idle, though her time on the streets had rendered her unfortunately familiar with the empty gnawing of hunger. Garrus took the afternoon off, as he had every year on the holiday since her stay in that Coventry hospital had come to an end. She appreciated the company, though she always insisted she didn’t need it. Still, it was nice not to be alone on such a sombre day.

She was dozing over a datapad of her own on the couch, weighing the idea of a walk around the neighbourhood or a cat nap, when Garrus stood up, abandoning the work he brought home with him, and crossed to the kitchen. He lingered longer than was necessary to grab a snack or a drink. Shepard turned her head to see what he was up to and caught him staring at the low-burning yahrzeit candles.

“You always watch them,” she thought aloud in a drowsy voice. He did, every year. She often caught him gazing at them intently, though she never thought to ask why.

He started, his talons flexing in a guilty gesture at his sides. He opened his mouth, then shut it, mandibles pinched tight.

Shepard was awake now. She sat up, then stilled. It wasn’t like him not to speak his mind. “Garrus?”

He didn’t turn around, but she saw his talons flex once more. “I lit one for you when—“ He cut himself off but she heard what went unsaid. _When you died._

Her throat went dry with an inaudible intake of breath. She had glimpsed him watch the yahrzeit candles for years and yet, this conclusion had never occurred to her. Garrus, who in those months of chasing Saren, had learned tolerance of other people and beliefs and cultures. Garrus, who had loved her then, not with the passion of carnal love or the ease of devoted companionship, but with the impossibly hopeful breadth of friendship. She had died when only that hand of camaraderie had been extended between them and yet he had still sought to honour her and her beliefs after she was gone.

He started talking in that anxious, awkward way he had when he grew nervous. “You were gone and one day I saw a temple announcing the holiday. I remembered you lighting these,” he gestured to the candles, making the flames leap, “on the _Normandy_ and I thought, well, there was no one to do it for you. I went in and met Rosenberg. Asked him about doing one for,” he stumbled over the words, “for you. He said it was unusual but showed me how to do it.” He was staring so intently into the flames. “It bothered me. That there was no one to do it for you.”

A tear ran down her face.

“Never saw a reason to tell you. You don’t like to talk about it. But every year around this time when you light them, I just think…” He paused with a cough, his subvocals wavering slightly. “Well. You’re here now.”

Shepard took a deep breath and wiped her wet face with a cold hand that trembled to her fingertips. She wanted to apologise for that sin of abandoning him; her best friend, her future lover, but she found it impossible to ask forgiveness for a transgression she might one day repeat against her will. Instead, she thought of how the Garrus who had once suffered the quarians to exile and the krogan to the genophage had learned instead to fight alongside her for peace on Rannoch and watched the cure rain down upon them on Tuchanka. He sought to fulfil her traditions as he grieved the loss of his commander, his friend.

Her lips tasted like the salt spilled by her ancestors as she whispered, “Thank you.”

He turned then, silently, and crossed back into the living room. Still without speaking, he lifted her to her feet and pressed his forehead against hers. Quietly, she breathed him in, that warm metallic smell of him, and felt his hot carapace and lean muscles press her into a hug she fervently returned.

Later, as the night cycle settled in, there would be lox and the best bagels and cream cheese the Citadel had to offer for break fast. The high holy days would be over and the grind of daily existence would return to normal. But in the artificial light of the afternoon, as Shepard stood in Garrus’ arms and dwelt on how very lucky she was to have him in her life; to be living that life, however fleeting it might be, she thought it was a _gut yontif_.


End file.
